


Sleeping on the Wing

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-02-06
Updated: 2002-02-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 06:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/353209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex figures out his place in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping on the Wing

## Sleeping on the Wing

by Brancher

[]()

* * *

TITLE: Sleeping on the Wing  
AUTHOR: Brancher  
PAIRING: C/Lx  
ARCHIVE: Ok  
ObDISCLAIM: Not mine, theirs. Superman created by Siegel & Shuster.  
SUMMARY: Lex figures it out.   
.  
.  
. 

``You know what the scariest thing is? To not know your place in this world. To not know why you're here. That's ... that's just an awful feeling.'' --Elijah Price 

.  
.  
. 

Lex opens his eyes and looks up into Clark Kent's sleeping face. 

The boy is floating, eyes closed, body loose, as if he were a conjuror's assistant held up by wires. The sheet is still draped over his hips, falling like a tent over Lex's body below; and the sheet sways a little, in the drafts of the room. 

When he was very young, Lex didn't like to dream, because he often could not tell when he was dreaming and when he was awake. For a second, now, that feeling returns, but without the familiar panic. He looks down, along the length of Clark's body, to where the pink penis drifts in the shadows of the bedsheet. 

He looks back up, to Clark's face. He is breathing deeply, his mouth just open. Approximately ten inches above Lex's. 

This is not wholy unexpected, Lex thinks. 

They have recently had sex, sex which is emblazoned on Lex's memory like a page from an illuminated manuscript, cream and gold, letters twisted into fabulous beasts. Dragon sex, griffin sex. Clark's tongue on every part of Lex's parchment skin, wide hands flat on the small of his back as he thrust and took his mouth away from Lex's only to breathe. 

Lex has always known something about Clark. Just as he has always known something about himself. Several things, in fact. 

``You're very strange, Lex,'' Clark had conceded the night before. Looking into his eyes, deadpan, about to smile. ``Ok? Super strange. But you _are_ human, you know. You're just part of...the natural variation.'' 

``Like three-headed calves?'' 

``Don't make fun of me!'' 

``I'm not. I'm just making a point.'' 

When Lex was nine, he'd had his hair blown off in a rain of fire and rock falling out of the sky. 

When he was eleven, he'd come home from school to find a note on the living room door. 

She was inside, draped over the couch. His first thought was that his father had killed her. But no: the heart medication had been his mother's own idea. 

Had she left herself there for him to find? 

He hadn't known if he were sleeping or awake until he'd touched her hand. 

Walk down the street in Smallville, KS, and all you see are tragedies waiting to happen. Ordinary people with their ordinary griefs. Lex feels himself larger than them somehow, more vivid, and it frightens him sometimes. 

You can tell when a person is dead by the feel of their skin: it's unmistakeable, the stillness when that hum of blood is gone. It's the degree of difference Lex feels between himself and everyone else. Everyone except Clark. 

Clark, with his unerring compulsion for what's right; Clark, too pure for gravity, it seems, the wide-eyed avatar of Good. 

He'd tried to explain all this, the night before, and Clark had fastened his lips to the lobe of his ear, suckling on it until the nerves came alive in that wet mouth, and Lex had lost his argument. 

Lex stretches out on the bed, curling his toes against the bottom sheet. With Clark as a canopy above him the bed is cold; it's the subtle change in temperature which must have awakened him. If he is awake at all. 

He thinks of his mother's hand, and then of Cassandra's, quieting terribly in his grasp. Other memories come with that one, like a half-remembered dream: a field of bones as delicate as flowers, a rain of blood staining his best suit. 

Clark hangs above him like the reflection in a mirrored ceiling. 

Superhuman after all, Lex thinks: I was right, he's like me, but the opposite, somehow. 

For now that he knows Clark's nature, he is certain of his own. 

I am Evil, he thinks, untroubled. Or: I am the author of destruction. I am Loki, father of the wolf. I am Shiva, who destroys. 

The idea had been a shock at first, but now he feels comforted. It's nice to be sure of where things stand. 

It unsettles Lex somewhat, however, that Good seems to be capable of having such fantastic sex with Evil. He doesn't think that bodes terribly well for a morally ordered universe. 

Reaching up, he lays his hand flat on Clark's chest. Warm. Moving with his breath. Lex lets his hand rest there a minute. He knows now that he is waking and not dreaming. 

He props himself up on one elbow to wrap his pale fingers around the back of Clark's neck, under the shag of silky hair. Slowly, he tugs his fate down into his arms. 

Clark drifts down through the air like an errant zeppelin, until he has weight again, pressing length for length down Lex's lean body. The dark head settles heavily on his shoulder. Lex shudders once and touches the back of the head, the length of Clark's spine, each vertebra slightly odd-shaped, inhuman. 

Clark stirs a little and Lex holds still until the boy breathes out evenly against his neck again. Holds still until he's seized by sleep and given over, once again, to dreams. 

.  
.  
. 

...A sudden down-draught reminds you of gravity and your position with respect to human love. But here is where the gods are, speculating, bemused. 

\--Frank O'Hara, "Sleeping on the Wing" 


End file.
